


my deadly one

by lagardère (laurore)



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Drunken Confessions, Gen, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 17:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17533055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurore/pseuds/lagard%C3%A8re
Summary: for the prompt: things you said when you were drunk





	my deadly one

“The issue… The issue with you, Tommy, sweetheart,” Ada slurs, rising with some effort from her sprawl upon the chair, “is that you’re not… you’re not a friend of the people.”

Tommy raises unimpressed eyebrows, blue eyes crystal-clear and decidedly sober behind the glasses.

“I’m not?”

“Not,” Ada nods, as the wine in her glass swirls along with the erratic movement of her wrist. “Abso…lutely not.”

“Well, you were always red enough for the both of us,” he says, draining the dregs of his own glass. He reaches out with a careful hand for the bottle, though it’s less to get a refill than to keep the wine out of her reach.

“This isn’t about communism,” Ada says with a laugh. It comes out bright and loud and in the stifling atmosphere of the smoking room, it’s such a surprise it almost causes him to drop glass and bottle - almost causes him to drop his composure and stare at her with unbridled fascination. This is not how they are, or perhaps this is not how they are with each other, but a closer and rather surgical scrutiny of his feelings reveals to him that the surprise was pleasant, and perhaps if it were in his power he would rather like to hear her laugh like that again. “It’s about _empathy_ ,” she says. “You could… can be the smartest man around, but if you… if you don’t unders… understand people…”

“But I do,” Tommy argues softly. “I know what motivates them. That’s enough.”

Ada takes a final gulp and sets down her glass on the small bronze table by the armchair, with enough force that the glass rolls away, miraculously intact, as red droplets land upon her bare wrist. Ada spares them a disinterested glance, holding her wrist aloft and away from her as if she were afraid she might stain her pretty evening dress. She was wearing jewellery when she came home, but now it lies in a heap upon the table, garnet earrings and the garnet pendant at the end of its thin golden chain and a ring Tommy thinks he might have bought for her, several years ago.

“You tell me then,” she says. “What is it that motivates me, according to the all-knowing Tommy Shelby?”

Tommy comes to put his glass down on the table, and after a moment’s consideration he sets hers upright, although he did feel tempted to let it roll further with a flick of a finger, on and on towards the boards peaking out at the edge of the carpet. The smash would be satisfying, tension unspooling…

Instead he grips her forearm and swipes his fingers across her wrist, wiping off the wine.

“You’re drunk,” he says, “and at the price of a bottle it’s something of a waste.”

The reckless look that comes upon her face then is one he knows well, from one too many Shelbys stepping with a grin in the line of fire, one too many Shelbys dancing their way into an early grave.

“Here,” she says, and presses a kiss to his fingers. Little wine left on them but the gesture is for show, much as his reprove had been. “So what is it? My motivation. What is it that keeps me by your side?”

“Hope that I’ll become a better man, and that your trust won’t be misplaced?” The smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It never does. And yet something flickers there, behind the vacant gaze. A ghost of a ghost, come to haunt the beloved ruins of a family home.

“Oh Tommy,” Ada says with a laugh. “If I didn’t like you at your worst, when would I ever like you?”

Tommy turns away from her, only half-conscious that he’s doing it to hide a wince. Someone else’s words in his mouth, Arthur’s maybe, about how a woman’s words can cut sharper than a knife. The world comes at him with bullets and assassins and deadly curses, and all it takes is a pretty face, a stockinged foot lightly kicking his thigh as her voice rises, drowsy, at his back.

“Come on. Don’t be a baby.”

And in a second he’ll turn and give her his coldest, meanest stare, but for now, with his face to the warm light of a desk lamp, with the comfortable setting of the library around them and her foot still worrying his leg, he merely smiles at himself.


End file.
